One of the first things a writer should consider before writing a story is whether they want it to be character- or plot-driven. If they are a particularly good writer, they might even be able to conjoin both narrative styles to create a well-rounded, thoroughly enjoyable product. If they are a particularly bad writer, however, they will end up with "Blacklist".

The problem with "Blacklist" is that it feels like watching someone go through an identity crisis: it simply doesn't seem to know what tone it wants to set, what world and what stakes it wants to establish, or what themes and topics it wants to incorporate into the story for what reason. It constantly flip-flops between a variety of common mystery drama tropes and plot devices without particularly focusing on anything, which essentially means that it accomplishes nothing. I saw a lot of people compare this drama to "The Gifted" but I truly fail to see the resemblance; aside from the largely similar cast and the fact that they briefly mention that the classes at Akeanan High School are being assigned based on the students' grades in Episode 1, a plot point which they end up never addressing again anyway, there's nothing even remotely similar. As someone who still fundamentally enjoyed and appreciated the work that went into the first season of "The Gifted," I cannot in good faith recommend "Blacklist" to fans of the series.

I truly found it baffling how they managed to get every single aspect of the production wrong. Not only are there enough plot flaws to go for miles but the camera work, direction, color grading, acting, styling, and sound editing are all painful to watch as well. If I tried to list everything wrong with "Blacklist" in detail, I could sit here until my age quadrupled and my body started decaying, so I will try to keep it as brief as possible while still mentioning the most important points of critique I have to offer.

Let's take a look at the technical aspects of the production first. The lighting and color grading throughout the entire drama change at the whims of the set crew and editors. Some shots are well-lit and true to color, while others are dimly lit and have a horrendous brown tint to them like there's a sepia filter overlaying it all. There are also times when the shots suddenly turn grey for no reason. Those scenes are not flashbacks or plot intersections that require to be highlighted in grey to aid with the visual storytelling but just regular scenes that they made grey for fun. The editors also seem to not have cared about scene consistency at all because the real mystery in this drama is how in some shots, characters will empty their bottles and in the next, they're completely full and sealed again.

The sound editing is also terrible. You can hear voices echo, loud surrounding noises that drown out the actual lines, or clearly hear when audio has been added in post because no effort was put into making the recordings match up with the lip flaps of the characters or adjust it to fit the background noises that would normally naturally occur if the scene had been shot anywhere but in a soundproof recording studio.

The subtitles are just as bad as the audio sometimes with many grammatical and spelling errors and in the last episode, there are even whole sections where characters are speaking but there are just no subtitles to translate what is being said. I suppose the subtitlers also felt too miserable to continue translating this.

I am usually very lenient when it comes to styling in school dramas because the characters obviously need to all wear the same thing. But the problem in this drama is that the few ways that they chose to individualize the characters' wardrobes just don't work. Lila is supposed to be the mean, fashionable girl but sometimes she will literally wear the same whimsical, juvenile hairstyle as Teacher Jinmanee, a grown woman who is presumably at least in her 30s. Title also used to wear a jacket at the beginning of the show, which worked pretty well to make him appear more laid-back and relaxed, but they ended up scrapping it a few episodes in and it never came back, even after he returned to Blacklist. They also basically gave Andrew the same styling as Wave in "The Gifted" in the last few episodes with the earrings and chain necklaces, which in my eyes served no other purpose but to be eye candy for the many people who just tuned in to see Chimon look handsome. The outfits that they gave the characters to wear outside of school are also incredibly basic and did absolutely nothing in terms of visual storytelling and to be honest, most of them weren't even very flattering for the actors. The fact that the best outfit one of the Blacklist members wears in the entire series is when Andrew just puts on some random shirt that belongs to Pakkard's father is laughable.

The acting is also subpar, which is really sad because there are so many good actors and actresses in this but the combination of the bad direction and the actors just having nothing to work with with those characters because they essentially have no personality to go off of probably lead to whatever this flat, boring acting was. The only actor that had some notably good scenes acting-wise was Ohm and even then his acting was still much worse than in any of his other projects because even if he gave his most, there's nothing to salvage this trainwreck in my eyes.

As for the plot, it's unnecessarily convoluted and everything is treated like an afterthought. There are so many serious topics in this, ranging from drug addiction and distribution to school shootings to illegal gambling to sexual abuse and rape to physical violence, and every single one of them is treated like it's just some cool and fun plot device to spice up the plot and not a serious problem that affects our society on the daily and needs to be properly addressed and unpacked. The morals of this drama are actually pretty messed up if you ask me: they pick and choose whether someone is evil or something is morally reprehensible or not based on their feeling in the moment.

They sympathize with a school shooter who tried to kill Lila and Bantad, her love interest, even tells her later that she should've just gotten shot. Blacklist also just casually beats up people left and right without even knowing if they are truly involved in any kind of illicit activity but we're still supposed to root for them because "they are the good guys" and it spontaneously always works out for them. They literally waterboard Joe in one episode to get information out of him when he's not even a member of The God's Hands, which if you don't know is a literal torture method and illegal because it's a human rights violation. But the most infuriating part to me is how Traffic doesn't even believe his sister after she tells him she was sexually abused by Teacher Jinmanee when she is clearly traumatized and has physical signs of abuse on her body, then shames her for being a drug addict instead of helping her, lets her abuser get back to her, and then lets the rapist go and teach at another school elsewhere. There were no repercussions whatsoever for Jinmanee besides her having to switch schools when she tried to kill Viking and Fah and possibly other students and sexually abused multiple female students. Instead, the characters even tell her that they love her and that she's a good teacher and praise her to no end and when I saw that, I truly hoped that the writers of this show would never get a job ever again. Every other criticism of the show that I had collected in my mind up until this point suddenly paled in comparison because while things like calling a group of girls "The Veggie Gang" are cringey, they are at least not as absolutely disgusting and vile as excusing literal crime simply because the people committing it are beautiful or handsome.

Meanwhile, Principal Karin is never shown to be evil until he is just said to be the mastermind behind The God's Hands and a rapist. He even appears to be a reasonable and caring principal in the first eight or so episodes, actively providing mental health sessions and counseling to students traumatized by the school shooting and rehabilitation programs to students affected by the Miracle drug that circulated around school. Andrew is also never shown to sabotage Blacklist until he is suddenly revealed to be Principal Karin's little puppet in one of the last episodes and is just ostracized from his group for no reason because of it. He literally did nothing wrong and is treated as some evil traitor when Title literally betrayed them more often than Andrew did and even put their lives in danger on various occasions. Andrew's father even explicitly states in one scene that Principal Karin would never have been caught if it hadn't been for Andrew, so I really don't understand what the writers were going for here.

The narrative choice to include a character episode for each member of Blacklist also doesn't work because the members barely appear in each other's episodes and therefore no group unity is built whatsoever and the characters' personalities are also not being developed although an entire episode is being dedicated to them for supposedly that very purpose. Each member seems expendable and it's never shown why they would need to be in the group because often characters just conveniently have the same skill sets all of a sudden if the story calls for it. Their motivations for joining are also unclear as they keep changing or simply make no sense. In one of the first episodes, for example, it is stated that Bantad joined Blacklist because he wants to get a scholarship but that's not available to students in the rearmost class at the moment and Teacher Wanpadej promised to give him one if he joined. In a later episode, however, it is said that Bantad voluntarily got into Class 4/6 and Blacklist at Teacher Wanpadej's request to get a "free scholarship," which implies he already has a scholarship but it's just not free, which also makes no sense because scholarships are by definition supposed to be free. I am not sure if it's a translation error and they meant a full-ride scholarship but regardless, the story is inconsistent.

All of the characters are also boring and I can't tell you more than one or two traits that they have. Traffic is always angry and in real life, he would probably be an abusive boyfriend. He will literally growl at Melon and risk her getting sexually abused by Jinmanee just because he doesn't want to believe his sister. He also insulted Fah and even completely forgot about her until the last three or so episodes when she was supposed to be his driving force in the story. I hate how he will scoff at Melon and just drag her around like she has no free will and we're supposed to think he's hot while he acts worse than a dog with rabies.

I was excited to see Highlight's relationship with Orange at first because I thought unlike the other relationships it might work out well since they've already been together since before the story starts and the actors, Ohm and Prigkhing, have great chemistry. And it looked promising at first because the way Highlight described his relationship with Orange seemed very cute and I could really understand why they would work well as a couple and then they just break up immediately. Are the writers really trying to convince me that Highlight and Orange broke up after two years because Highlight lied to Orange once? And they didn't even try to make it a steady decline in trust that leads up to them breaking up, it was just over all of a sudden and both of the characters became pretty unimportant to the plot after.

Title is also a mess. I hated his character because he was an asshole to everyone and even flirted with Orange right after she broke up with Highlight, which no good friend would do. He already has a love interest that he has some vague deep history with, so why did they even need that storyline with Title and Orange when it lead to nothing? Just to fill some runtime? How about they used that to actually develop the story instead? They also all act like he died after he leaves Blacklist and say that they can't talk to him anymore because they might get exposed as members of Blacklist as well, which is so weird because wouldn't it be more suspicious if they suddenly stopped talking to him completely when they have been friends all this time? But I digress.

As for Andrew, Jimbae, and Bantad, I honestly barely remember them. They exist and they do something when needed but they have no memorable qualities whatsoever. Their love interests are equally unimportant and I really question why any of these characters exist. Maybe if you melted all of the characters together, you might get enough personality to make one decent one.

Either way, this drama gave me a massive headache and I had serious trouble finishing it. Even while writing this, I just got so upset halfway through that I wanted to bang my head against the wall, which probably would've killed less of my brain cells than watching this drama did. I don't understand how this drama still has an 8.0 rating at the time of writing and I honestly wonder what's wrong with the people who enjoyed this. I just hope nobody wastes their time with this drama because there are a lot of other things you can watch to simp for whatever actor you currently have the hots for that appears in this.